World War One logistics
Friday, Jan 10 2014

Finishing up a transcription here, from a letter by Capt. Bradford Ellsworth (306th Inf, 77th Division) to his sister Helen van Loben Sels, written in January 1919. While those in the military are acutely aware of the headache that getting a force from one side of the globe to the other entails; those of us who are civilians tend to overlook it. The almighty traffic jam after WWI is hinted at in this paragraph:

“Not much of interest happens now that Jerry has quit and even the threatened revolution doesn’t seem to come off and the only excitement has been the rumors which were many and interesting until last night when our preliminary order for going home came in. We leave this area (ed. note: unspecified area of Northern France) before 14th February and go to the delousing – pretty word- station at Le Mons and from there to the ports as the boats become available. We ought to sail about 15th March and be in New York 1st April, where a quarantine of 2 weeks will make us all sore. About 15th May we ought to be out of uniform and sitting around and telling ‘what a helluva a fellow I was’ and other stories. Everyone has cheered up immensely and we’ve forgotten to knock even the Y.M.C.A. which has always been a favorite indoor sport with the A.E.F. We say ‘the military police of Paris Won the war, the Marines got the glory, and the Y.M.C.A. got the money, where does the doughboy come in?’

His comment on the revolution, refers of course to the upheaval in Germany, and that rather nasty affair in Russia…in which a few American forces did end being involved in. The rumors probably had been quite wild.

His estimated timing for demobilization wasn’t too far off, only about two weeks too optimistic, the advantage of being the I.O.

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